Almost three decades ago, “Enchanted Sisters,” an unpredictable mix of horror, romance, comedy and tragedy, hit theaters. The fact that the film still has a place in pop culture today and is now even getting a sequel could almost be considered witchcraft. Ultimately, the reviews in 1998 were quite mixed: many reviewers found the plot about Gillian (Nicole Kidman) and Sally Owens (Sandra Bullock), who grow up with their witchy aunts in a picturesque small town on the US East Coast to be too meandering and confusing, to many reviewers. Over the course of the film, in which tragedy and humor often alternate rather abruptly, the sisters also come into contact with the family curse, which causes every man who loves them to die early. For a long time, “Magic Sisters” was considered a flop that no longer deserved any attention. Similar to “Fight Club” (1999) or “Donnie Darko” (2001), “Magic Sisters” was granted a second chance:
In the decades that followed, a largely female audience rediscovered the film on VHS, television and DVD – and suddenly enjoyed the film’s upbeat tone despite all the pain, the production design that emphasized closeness to nature and comfort, and the central message that revolved less around romantic love than the inseparable bond between two unequal sisters. Despite or precisely because of its strangeness, such as the sometimes very sudden integration of serious topics such as domestic violence, “Magical Sisters” became a much-loved feel-good film that appealed to several generations of women. From the 2020s at the latest, when interest in practiced witchcraft and a “witchy” aesthetic revived on social media, calls for a sequel became louder. With “Practical Magic 2 – Magical Sisters” they have now been heard. But were they also understood?
Even 28 years later, Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock have lost none of their sisterly charm!
As with “Magic Sisters”, the template once again comes from the writer Alice Hoffman. “Practical Magic 2” is based on the fourth volume in the series about the Owens family, “The Book of Magic”. The film opens with a voiceover recorded by Sandra Bullock, which immediately presents hard facts: Contrary to what is suggested at the end of “Magic Sisters”, the family curse has not yet been lifted and her then lover Gary (Aidan Quinn) died a few years after they got together. In her grief, Sally then renounces all witchcraft. Instead, she wants to keep her two daughters away from the family “gift.” A jump in time to the present shows Sally as a somewhat exaggerated widow who runs the city library in a coastal town and simply stubbornly ignores ominous events in her environment – including a raven that constantly follows her.
The fact that things are lively right from the start, despite Sally’s sadness, is thanks to the reunion with the still unbridled Gillian and the two elderly aunts Franny (Stockard Channing) and Jet (Dianne Wiest). They continue to cultivate their magical powers and nonchalantly ignore Sally’s defensive attitude. One would just like to indulge in nostalgia here if there wasn’t some irritation about the timeline: When Sally’s adult daughters Kylie (Joey King) and Antonia (Maisie Williams) show up for Jet’s birthday, one wonders why Evan Rachel Wood couldn’t reprise her role as Sally’s daughter from the first part and whether that’s really possible given the 25-year plot difference from the first part. The daughters’ lack of memory of any witchcraft, which they witnessed at home in the first part, is also somewhat surprising.
The next generation of Owens women: Will Kylie (Joey King) and Antonia (Maisie Williams) also have to face the family curse?
But anyone who manages to successfully suppress this confusion of continuity will soon experience a comfortable sense of familiarity. Despite all the differences of opinion between Gillian and Sally, the sisterly closeness is still noticeable, which Kidman and Bullock wonderfully revive. The plot does the rest, which once again offers a dense succession of tragic strokes of fate and invigorating moments. So Sally and Gillian soon find themselves on a trip to England to prevent the dreaded family curse from striking again – with Kylie’s boyfriend Gideon (Xolo Maridueña), who is in a coma after a rear-end collision. Professor Ian Wright (Lee Pace), who is familiar with magic and whom Sally, despite all his attraction, is supposed to help them with, may be well-founded mistrust.
Imperfect but charming
With this mixture of well-known and only slightly developed elements about the history of the Owens family and Sally’s struggles with her origins, “Practical Magic 2” certainly doesn’t break new ground, but rather aims at what made “Magic Sisters” so special: a comfort that results from the lively combination of darkness and light, bitter realities of life and magical realism. Director Susanne Bier, who has already made “A New Summer” with Kidman and “Bird Box” with Bullock, continues with a similar verve in the production what original director Griffin Dunne did with the first part. The script, on the other hand, sometimes has difficulty weaving the narrative strands together elegantly. Unfortunately, characters like Franny and Antonia are all too often left behind.
In addition, the artificially warm glow of the coloring and the slightly artificial-looking patina show, somewhat painfully, that we are arriving at a late sequel almost three decades after the part that was then still flooded with natural light and shadow. Nevertheless, the sequel remains uncompromisingly true to the much appreciated messages of the first part and is permeated with such a joy of life that, despite all its imperfections, you can hardly ignore its charm as a fan of “Magic Sisters”.
Conclusion: “Practical Magic 2” continues the plot about the Owens sisters with the usual tragicomic momentum, but also a few bumps. Despite some continuity gaps, you simply cannot escape the charm of this sequel, which relies on nostalgic comfort.